Time Allocation Among Couples

How do couples-whether married or cohabiting, allocate their time? Do they engage in activities jointly, or are they co-located but engaged in different activities? To what extent do they act independently? Do couples schedule their activities to enable time together (or to avoid it)? How do couples distribute various work tasks among themselves, and how do they share leisure?

The answers to these questions throw light on important issues of gender equity and of men's and women's comparative life-chances, as well as decisions or choices about the timing and total quantity of various sorts of work and leisure time for both sexes. The questions can best be answered by appropriate use of the sorts of diary-derived time use information which is the main tool of the CTUR.

Some of the studies in the MTUS contain diaries from spouse-pairs, often covering the same days. The Harmonised European Time-Use Study (HETUS) recommends a sample design that produces spouse-pairs of records of diary days. The UK in particular has, in addition to its 2000/1 HETUS study, a number of national samples (from 1974/5, 1984 and 1987, and 1999-2001) which provide spouse-pairs of 7-day diaries. Whole-week diaries provide a better basis for comparing couples' behaviour than the more conventional single-day diaries, since both work and leisure activities are generally organised on a weekly rather than a daily basis. The UK's historical sequence of such studies therefore constitutes a uniquely valuable resource; the CTUR plans, during 2006 and 2007, to use these materials to explore the evidence of change and continuity in UK couples' time-use over the last 30 years.